


By a Brother's Hand

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Rating: NC17, Sam/Dean - Freeform, non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:11:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not quite the ordinary "a witch made them do it" story, certainly not if one expects a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By a Brother's Hand

“If you’d been a little faster, she wouldn’t have gotten any words out at all,” Dean reminded Sam heatedly, shoving the motel room door open with his boot and stalking in. 

 

Covered from head to toe in smudgy grey ash the consistency of river silt, Dean wasn’t inclined to cut his brother any slack at his perceived hesitation. 

 

“And if you’d just gotten out of the way when I’d told you to, she’d have been dead before she’d gotten to her circle.”

 

Dean shrugged, not conceding even though he knew Sam was right.  So soon after the death of their father, Dean was inclined to protect Sam at all costs—even when those costs were greater than what he’d expected to pay.

 

“It’s a moot point anyway, man,” Sam said, tone shifting to something softer, recognition of Dean’s motives clear.  “Nothing happened.”

 

“We don’t know that, Sam.  Just because I didn’t break out into boils or go warty doesn’t mean I’m not going to feel that curse later.”

 

Dean found himself perversely satisfied with the look of unease that crossed his brother’s face.  Then he felt tired—of himself, of this life, of always being afraid of losing what was left him.  He dropped his leather jacket to the floor, watching disconsolately as a cloud of fine dust wafted out across the motel room’s dingy brown rug.

 

“Take a shower,” Sam said, nose wrinkling as he backed away a few steps to avoid the miasma of ash that seemed to follow Dean like he was some supernatural Pigpen.

 

Dean just grunted an acknowledgement of the suggestion and started to strip free of his clothes, leaving them in a cloudy pile near the door.  When he was naked of all but his boxers, he padded past Sam toward the bathroom, brushing his brother’s bare arm as he negotiated the narrow space between the table and the bed where Sam sat.

 

Sam stood up so suddenly that Dean had to stumble back a pace to avoid being shoved.

 

“What--?” was as far as Dean got before Sam’s huge hands clamped tightly around his bare shoulders and he was spun around and propelled backwards toward the bed.  His knees struck the mattress to either side of the corner edge, and Dean was on his back before he could figure out how he’d gotten there.

 

Sam followed him down, planting a knee between Dean’s splayed legs on the narrow triangle of mattress there, pushing his brother upward until his toes just brushed the rug and then bracketing Dean’s head with either hand.

 

“Sam, what the--?” he managed before Sam closed the distance between their mouths and claimed Dean’s lips in a rough kiss.

 

It took Dean a moment to shake off the shock of his brother kissing him, and then he was struggling in earnest, trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of his thinly clad groin rubbing up against Sam’s insistent knee.

 

He got a hand up to Sam’s chest and pushed, but the angle was bad, and Sam merely rumbled a dirty laugh against Dean’s lips and shoved his tongue down Dean’s throat.

 

Panicked now, Dean pushed harder and tried to find purchase with one heel against the edge of the box spring, but his bare feet weren’t helping, and he couldn’t get enough leverage to roll Sam off of him because of the wide spread of his thighs.

 

The curse.  It had to be the curse.

 

Mind working, Dean tried to remember anything from Dad’s book that might help him dispel this thing that was riding his brother.  He broke off the train of thought when Sam moved his mouth away—finally—to nip a line down Dean’s jaw and neck to his collarbone.

 

“Sam!  It’s the curse, man.  You’ve got to fight it.  This isn’t you, Sam.  C’mon, you don’t even like guys, much less me.  I’m your _brother_. Sam!”

 

Nothing was penetrating Sam’s persistent focus on working his way down Dean’s body.  As much as he didn’t want to imagine where Sam’s mouth was headed, Dean knew it might be his only chance at getting free of his brother.  Once Sam shifted his weight down Dean’s body, he’d have more room to maneuver.

 

But Sam had already thought of that, and even as he dipped his wet tongue into Dean’s navel, he dropped his forearm across Dean’s throat, not pressing, just promising. 

 

“Sam,” Dean whispered, fully afraid and unable to keep it from his voice.

  
Sam looked up at him from beneath the fringe of his too-long hair, and the look in his brother’s eyes was wicked and hungry and wrong in so many ways. 

 

“Don’t fight me, Dean,” Sam said, voice slow and deep, rolling over Dean’s skin like a touch.  Dean shivered, and something dark in Sam’s eyes shifted just that little bit.  He was gloating. 

 

Sam increased the pressure on Dean’s throat long enough to used the hand not occupied with holding Dean down to slide his brother’s boxers down his body just enough to free Dean’s trapped flesh.

 

“Sam—“ Dean began, whether warning or whining, Dean couldn’t be sure, but Sam stopped all the words, driving them off of Dean’s lips and out of his head altogether when he dropped his lips over Dean’s shaft, which had risen to the occasion despite his internal conflict.

 

Dean swallowed back a moan.  This wasn’t happening.  His little brother was not giving him a blowjob on the bed of some no-tell motel in the middle of East Buttfuck, Indiana.

 

Gathering his resolve, Dean bucked up hard into that mouth, trying to make his brother gag, but Sam only hummed his approval at Dean’s movement and increased his pressure across Dean’s throat. 

 

Breathing was suddenly a priority, and Dean let himself go limp until Sam eased back a little.  Then Dean gasped in grateful lungfuls of air and tried to think around the reluctant hum of pleasure coming from his core, where his brother—god, his _brother_ —was working him over like a pro.

 

That thought did nothing to ease Dean’s dismay at the situation, and when Sam finally slid his mouth away, Dean tried a different tack.

 

“Man, if I’d known you were a cocksucker, I’d have kicked you out of the car months ago.”

 

It wasn’t true, in fact.  Dean had nothing against gay people, despite his pride in constantly baiting Sam about his brother’s sexual identity.  But he thought if he could make Sam mad, he might be able to distract him from his apparent plan to suck Dean’s soul out through his dick.

 

He thought he’d succeeded when Sam’s forearm suddenly disappeared from his throat, and Dean started to struggle upright, despite Sam’s weight still pinning him awkwardly at the corner of the bed.

 

He didn’t see the ringing blow coming, and it snapped his head to the right, left him seeing stars, streamers of dark flowing across his tear-blurred sight.

 

When he could see clearly once more, Dean directed a look of mingled hurt and surprise at Sam, who was once again looking up the length of Dean’s body at his brother.  This time, though, his eyes were dark with something other than hunger.

 

“We can do this the hard way, if you’d rather.”

 

It wasn’t Sam’s voice, not his baby brother, not the kid who’d annoyed him through forty-eight states as they were growing up.  It wasn’t even the Sam who’d stormed at their father as he’d insisted on Stanford and a future that didn’t include Dean.

 

It was a stranger who knelt so intimately between Dean’s thighs, and that look more than anything sent home to Dean what was happening here.

 

His brother was curse-ridden, and there was nothing Dean could do about it but give in.  His own voice echoed at him from out of the past.  “ You don’t stop a curse, Sam. You just get out of its way.”  This curse was already on him.  He couldn’t get out of its way.  All he could do was hang on and hope he survived the ride.

 

“Okay,” Dean said, voice shaking.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Uh, okay, Sam, whatever you say.  Let’s just…uh…why don’t we just go back to what we were doing before…”

 

With a smirk that said he’d won something, Sam resumed his ministrations to Dean’s now flaccid shaft.

 

Soon enough, despite that he didn’t want to be in this position, Dean was responding, his flesh all too weak despite that his spirit was unwilling.  He tried to imagine that it was someone besides Sam working him over, maybe that hot little blonde waitress who’d brought them beers at the bar last night, tried anything that would take his mind off what was happening right then and there.

 

He was close.  He could feel the pleasure tensing low in his belly, feel his balls growing heavy with needed release, and he almost sighed aloud to know that this was going to be over soon.

 

Then Sam stopped.

 

It took Dean a second to realize that the wet pressure was gone, but when he did, he glanced down his belly to find Sam’s eyes on him again, this time with a different kind of hunger.

 

Dean started to say, “No,” and then remembered Sam’s earlier warning.  Still, he couldn’t let this happen, not this.  Bad enough Sam had blown him.  But penetration was right out of the equation.  No way.

 

“Sam,” Dean warned, using his best big brother voice.  Sam surged up him, pinning him heavily to the bed with his full weight, and then bit Dean, hard, on the lower lip.  Hot copper filled Dean’s mouth even as he let loose a shout muffled by Sam’s devouring mouth.

  
When his brother pulled back and growled, “What did I tell you?” Dean had a moment to feel the full wash of pain from the bite before Sam’s hand was between them, working awkwardly at his zipper to free himself.

 

Dean knew, intellectually, what came next.  And he wanted to stop it.  Wanted to throw his brother off of him and flee this nightmare space, find some bar where he could get obliterated and wash the taste of his own blood out of his mouth, pretend that he didn’t know what it felt like to have Sam’s lips around his dick.

 

But Sam’s weight held him centered there, sprawled beneath his baby brother, and Sam’s breath hot in his face brought him back to the moment, to knowing that this was going to happen and Dean was going to let it.  It wasn’t Sammy’s fault, Dean told himself, feeling his brother work his hand back behind his balls, feeling a single finger probing at his opening, feeling it slide in dry, which made Dean wince.

  
He’d never done this, not even with the more adventurous girls who’d been in his bed time and again.  He sure as hell hadn’t ever thought he’d be doing it with a guy, much less with Sam.

 

He held his breath and found that that made it hurt more, so he tried to relax into it as Sam’s finger pushed in deeper and then brushed something inside him that sent sharp sparks through his belly.  Dean sucked in a breath and tried not to panic.  This would only be okay if he didn’t enjoy it, he’d decided at some point.  He was still the big brother, still responsible for seeing that Sam came through okay.

 

He couldn’t enjoy it.  That was a kind of betrayal they’d never survive.  He had to be in control, for what that was worth.

 

So when the second finger pushed in, Dean resisted, tensing and holding his breath, and the sensation of being too full was painful, the sensation of that secret touch not so pleasurable as it was invasive.

 

A third finger made him suck in a sharp breath.  It hurt.  A lot. 

 

When Sam removed his fingers suddenly, that hurt, too, and Dean couldn’t entirely bite back the grunt of pain it evoked.

 

Sam shushed him like a lover, and that sent sick tendrils through Dean’s stomach.  He swallowed convulsively once, twice, trying to get his rebelling belly back under his control.  He reminded himself that this had to happen so that Sam would be okay.

 

When the nudge of something enormous at his opening brought Dean’s focus back to the immediate moment, he widened his eyes and started to say, “No.”  He knew that Sam needed this, knew it was the only way out of the curse, but he couldn’t do it.  It hurt, sure, but that wasn’t what made him want to beg Sam to get off of him.  He’d taken a lot worse pain his time.

 

What bothered him was the idea of being filled.  He couldn’t imagine Sam inside of him, so close.  Couldn’t imagine that anything they were would survive it.  How could they be brothers after that?

 

He didn’t have time to protest, though, for Sam shoved himself inside of Dean then, enough to force the wide head of his member through the ring of muscle.

 

Dean was robbed of breath by the pain and a guttural cry came out of him that made him wince to hear it hit the air.

 

Sam inched in further, and Dean thought he was going to die.  Pain bloomed out from that place, spreading through his belly in cramping waves, driving up into his chest and freezing his breath there.  Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and Dean had everything he could do not to sob out loud.

 

Then Sam was seated, muttering soothing nonsense over Dean’s averted face, as though whatever words he was saying were an incantation to keep the pain away.

 

Dean felt riven open, split in two by the enormity of the act, by the fact of Sam so close to him, so far inside of him that he thought he must feel Sam’s self inside his own, brushing the place where his heart used to beat.

 

“Look at me,” Dean heard, and he found himself almost volitionless against the sound of Sam’s voice.  Something in it was his brother, and Dean couldn’t deny him.

 

He turned his face toward Sam, opened his eyes, found Sam hovering over him, eyes full of a kind of wonder that didn’t belong on the face of a brother. 

 

Sam moved then, a slight shifting of his hips, and Dean’s eyes widened at the heat that came between them as Sam touched that place deep inside of him.  Sam’s eyes warmed with knowing, and Dean had to close his own.  He couldn’t watch his undoing unfold across his brother’s familiar face.

 

Sam moved again, still so deep inside of Dean, moving his hips in an undulating motion that drove the head of him up against the spot inside Dean that betrayed him. 

 

Dean moaned, and Sam moved harder, thrusting now, driving in and out of his brother and chanting words that might have been love over Dean’s sweaty skin.  Dean canted his hips a little, almost against his will, and Sam’s angle changed, forcing a cry from Dean’s lips.

 

Dean threw his head back and tried—god, he tried—to think of anything but what Sam was doing to him, of how he suddenly felt like he was going to die, pinned on the axis of pleasure that was Sam’s seeking shaft, a spinning world coming willingly apart in the nova of its exploding sun.

 

Sam’s name spun from his lips in a string of babble as he felt the hot pulse of his own seed against his belly in the moment before his core was flooded with Sam’s searing release.  He gasped, trying to breathe through the pleasure-pain of it, overwhelmed by knowledge he’d never wanted—Sam’s face as he came, the sweet slick slide of their joined bellies, Sam’s shirt rucked up from thrusting, through the evidence of Dean’s pleasure, the gust of uneven breathing in his ear, and then Sam’s self-satisfied laugh like a cold bucket of water, bringing Dean back to himself.

 

Sam sprawled atop Dean, chest heaving, making it hard for Dean himself to draw breath.  He thought that might be alright.  There was no way the rest of this night was going to go well, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to survive it anyway.

 

But still, when Sam leaned up suddenly, bracing himself one hand to either side of Dean’s sweaty face, Dean had to speak.

  
“Sam, man, it’s okay.  It was the curse.”  Already, he was spinning the line he hoped would save them.  Maybe if they both believed it as hard as they could, they could forget the part where they’d each come crying the other’s name.

 

Recognition flitted across Sam’s face, and just like that, he went from stranger-lover to brother once more.  Dean saw the moment Sam realized what had happened.  He expected horror, and he wasn’t disappointed.

 

Sam’s disgust was evident as he scrambled away from Dean, and Dean couldn’t hide his discomfort as Sam wrenched out of him with a wet sound.

 

Sam stumbled backward a step, reaching frantically for his pants, which were trapped around his thighs.  Dean tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t quite manage it, but he reached one hand up from the bed, saying, “Take it easy, Sam.  It was the curse.  It was only the curse.  It’s okay.  We’re going to be fine.”

 

He didn’t believe it, but he had to say something.

 

And then a sneer came across Sam’s face, something ugly and alien that Dean had never seen there, and Sam said, distinctly, “God, Dean, you really are a whore.”

 

Something icy and snakelike slithered through Dean’s belly.  “What?” he managed on suddenly stiff lips.

 

“You’re disgusting.  Stay away from me from now on.  In fact, why don’t you get the fuck out.”

 

“Sam, wait—“ Dean called to Sam’s retreating back.  The slam of the bathroom door was all he got in response.

 

Of all the reactions he’d expected from his brother, blame had certainly been near the top of the list, but this…

 

It had to be the curse.

 

Dean told himself that over and over as he levered himself up, cleaned the worst of the mess off his belly and from between his legs with the ruined boxers, and climbed carefully into clean clothes.

 

Silence came from behind the bathroom door, and much as Dean wanted to know what Sam was thinking, he wasn’t sure he could stand to hear it if it was more of the same.  He shook the worst of the witch-ash from his jacket and shrugged into it, palming the keys to the Impala and sliding out the door without a word.

 

*****

 

Dean’s head was spinning, and he was having trouble focusing on the blonde head busy between his legs.  The rough brick wall of the bar burning against his butt brought him back to himself a little, as did the cold air tracing across his exposed belly.  He narrowed his eyes a little as he tried to remember her name.

 

Lisa?  Lila?  Luann?

 

Giving it up as a bad deal, he let his head thump painfully against the brick and gave the sky a cursory glance.  It had the kind of piercing clarity only really cold nights could offer, and his breath made a scrim through which the stars blurred and swayed.

 

He closed his eyes, swallowed hard to let the bile slide back to his belly, and concentrated on the sensation of hot mouth around his half-hard cock.

 

He couldn’t seem to get with the program, no matter how enthusiastically the woman kneeling on the damp asphalt at his feet worked him over.  He kept remembering how Sam’s mouth felt, kept feeling the phantom pain of his brother piercing him, kept seeing the look in Sam’s eyes as he stumbled away from the bed where he’d deflowered his brother.

 

 _Deflowered?_   Dean snorted at his own terminology.  He wasn’t some weeping virgin. 

 

The girl giving him head made a sound that wasn’t entirely pleasure, and Dean struggled to figure out how long she’d been down there.  The eight shots of Jack she’d brought him made it hard for him to remember much of anything, and it surely wasn’t helping her cause, either.

 

He dropped a hand to her head, grimacing internally at the sticky hairspray that held it in place, and said, “Honey, it isn’t you.  Guess I’ve just had a few too many.”

 

She slid off of him and looked up, swollen lips glistening red in the dim glow of parking lot lights that broke the darkness between the dumpster and the wall where they were having their little liaison.

 

“I’ll make it good for you yet,” she breathed, seeming committed to her task.  She returned without another word to trying to suck him down her throat.  She’d been like this all night, from the moment he’d handed her a twenty to keep ‘em coming and her fingers had slid suggestively over his palm as she took the tip.

 

Dean let his head go back against the brick, hard, hoping it would drive some clarity into his swimming skull.  He began to imagine a series of increasingly lewd situations, hoping it would hurry things along for them both.  He was sure she wanted to get her own jollies and get out of the cold.

 

His eyes were closed on a particularly intricate picture of Angelina Jolie doing something anatomically improbable, and his ears were full of the porn-style soundtrack coming from the region of his groin—and he was really fucking drunk—which were the reasons Dean would tell himself later for why he missed the guy coming around the corner of the bar until his bulk blocked the light making Dean’s inner lids orange and made him open them.

 

At first, he figured it was the girl’s— _god, what was her name?_ —boyfriend come to exact revenge, and Dean smiled a little at the idea, thinking maybe a good fight was just what he needed to get the images of Sam between his legs out of his head.

 

He put on his most annoying, self-satisfied smirk, dropped a possessive hand to the back of the girl’s head, and said, “Wait your turn.”

 

Predictably, the man hit him, and Dean let the first blow go, careful only that his head didn’t hit the wall behind him as he took it.

 

The pain gave him clarity no amount of deep breathing could have, and as the girl fell back on her ass, crab-walking backwards away from them both and shrieking obscenities at the man, whose name was apparently Kyle, Dean reached for his fly to take care of that before joining the fight for real.

 

But Kyle interrupted him, a hand going around Dean’s own to still the movement before he could tuck himself away.

 

“Uh, I don’t swing that way,” Dean started to say, until he looked up to see in Kyle’s eyes a familiar expression that filled him with sickening dread.

 

He pulled away just as Kyle’s other hand came up to grab the back of Dean’s neck and pull him in for a kiss, a kiss Dean resisted with everything he had.

 

He spun out of Kyle’s twin grip, forgetting his zipper in his panic to get away, but an unexpected hand around his ankle tripped him, and he went down hard on his back, the breath driven from him for a moment. 

 

The girl was on him in an instant, straddling him, grinding against his exposed shaft and making him cry out in pain.

 

He might have been relieved when her weight was pulled off of him, except that it was because Kyle was dragging her up by the hair.  She screamed, half pain, half rage, and spun in Kyle’s tearing grip to start clawing at his face.

 

Dean scrambled backwards, got to his feet, and turned to run.  He had to get to the car, get away from this place. 

 

A fist in his jacket collar yanked him backward, and he swore and ducked, spinning out of his jacket to be free of the confining grasp.  He pivoted once more toward the parking lot and slammed right into a wall of flesh, looking up just in time to catch the bouncer’s avid eye before a meaty hand came out of nowhere and sent him reeling into the bar’s back wall.

 

After that, he tried really hard not to think about what was happening to him.

 

*****

 

When Dean came to, the first thing he felt was a strange sense of calm.  He was staring up at the starry sky, his breath intermittently interfering with the view.  Seeing it made him remember that he _was_ breathing, which reminded him in turn that every breath hurt.  Inhaling sent searing shards through his chest, and he knew that something was broken there.  He tried to sit up, but that hurt worse, and he choked back the cry of agony movement of any kind engendered.  He didn’t want anyone else finding him.

 

He rolled his head carefully to one side, feeling the slick slide of the movement rearranging the flesh of his face, and he wondered how badly he was hurt.

 

Maybe he should just lie there and let the cold take him, he considered.  He couldn’t feel his lower extremities, though he could tell that he wasn’t wearing much from his chest to his knees.  He thought his boots were still on.

 

He saw that he was in the field behind the bar and at some distance from the rear parking lot.  The bar’s lights were off, so it was after two a.m.  No one seemed to be around.  With an effort that made him shake and cry, Dean levered himself up on one elbow and reached for his jacket, only to realize he’d lost it somewhere. 

 

His cell phone was in it.  _Fuck_.

 

Cursing the pain in his ribcage, Dean managed to roll over onto his hands and knees.  The throbbing agony in his face made him nauseated, and he vomited between his splayed hands.  Every heave sent a wave of pain through his chest, bringing on more heaving, until he thought he might pass out in a puddle of his own sick.

 

Clenching his teeth, hanging on to consciousness with every ounce of stubborn will he’d ever had, Dean managed to push himself upright until he was sitting back on his heels. 

 

Standing up took him another ten minutes of shaking effort.

 

Bending to pull up his pants made the broken halves of things grind together, and he screamed, unmindful of an audience, pain too large to let him keep it to himself.

 

His zipper was shot, he could see, probably from when he’d strained against it to try to get his legs further apart—his mind skittered away from that image, and he took in several fast, shallow breaths—and he could barely manage the buttons with his numb fingers.  Finally, he put the tips of his fingers in his mouth to warm them enough to fasten his pants, and he felt warm tears leaking down his cheeks as the pins and needles drove through his nerve endings, bringing back sensation.

 

The shuffle to the back of the bar took him eons, and by the time he got to the shadow that proved to be his jacket, Dean was pretty sure that death was preferable to the pain he was in.

 

Still, he was a Winchester, and no matter what else they were, Winchesters were tough bastards.  He could hear his father’s drill sergeant voice driving through him, telling him he had to be harder, better, stronger than that if he wanted to survive.

 

Thing was, Dean wasn’t sure he did.  He had been ignoring the spiking pain driving up from between his legs and causing wrenching cramps across his lower back and through his belly, but he knew damned well what had caused it.  He wasn’t sure this was the sort of thing his father would have been proud of him for living through.

 

Retrieving the jacket took a kind of negotiation with his injuries that left him slumped against the wall, breathing in quick, short gasps to try to assuage the fire in his lungs. 

 

It took him three tries to hit the on button and another four to scroll down to the right number and dial.

 

When Sam answered, Dean had to swallow a sob.  His brother sounded sleepy but Sam-like, and his, “Dean?” was full of concern, nothing else.

  
“Sammy?” Dean whispered.

 

“Dean, where are you?”  Sam’s voice said he knew that something was wrong.

 

“Can you come?” Dean said, skipping the part about where he was.  His vision was starting to close in on him, darkness creeping toward the center of his sight.

 

“Where are you?” Sam said again, slowly, and Dean realized that Sam must not remember what had happened or he couldn’t possibly sound so worried for his whore of a brother.

 

“The bar from before,” he said, sliding down the wall, breath stuttering at each line of brick as it jostled his broken ribs.

 

“I’ll be there in five,” Sam said.

 

Dean might have mumbled something, but he wasn’t sure.  The last thing he heard was the plastic clatter of the phone hitting the ground beside him, and then he sank gratefully under the encroaching dark.

 

*****

 

Dean didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it couldn’t have been much more than the five minutes Sam had promised, because when he opened his eyes again, his brother was crouched in front of him, hands hovering over his face, expression so open and broken that Dean thought he must look even worse than he felt.

 

“Sam,” Dean croaked, throat full of gravel, and Sam said, “Dean,” his own voice not much better. 

 

Dean tried to sit up away from the wall, tried to use one hand to lever himself up, and Sam dropped a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back gently.

 

“Sit still, Dean.  You need an ambulance.  Just…sit still.”

 

“Can’t,” Dean managed, every breath an agony.  He was trying not to let the pain ride his voice, but he was tired and hurt everywhere, and he knew that Sam could hear his fear.

 

“We’ll give them a fake i.d., Dean, but you need a doctor.”

 

“Can’t.” He said again.  “Curse.”

 

Sam’s face clouded with confusion.  “What curse, Dean?  What are you talking about?”

 

“I’m cursed,” Dean slurred, eyes sliding closed.  He was so tired.  He wanted to sleep for a week and wake up someone else.

 

“Dean, no.”  Sam’s voice was gentle, his denial genuine.  “You’re just confused,” he explained.  “Who did this to you?”  And there were sharpened edges lining Sam’s worried words, then.

 

“’s the curse,” Dean insisted.  “They didn’t know.”

  
“ _They_?”  Dean could hear the effort it took Sam to gather himself at that revelation.  “How many, Dean?  Who hurt you?”

 

Dean shook his head in a miniscule motion of negation.  He wouldn’t tell Sam who it had been.  It wasn’t their fault, no more than it had been Sammy’s when he’d…

Dean let that thought go.

 

Summoning what was left of his failing energy, Dean said around a mouthful of blood and bile, “Anyone who touches me wants to…you know.  It’s the witch’s curse.”

 

It was the best he could manage.  He had to hope Sam was smart enough to put two and two together.

 

He’d forgotten how quick Sam could be, though.

 

“Anyone?  But, Dean, that can’t be right, because I’ve touched you since we killed the witch, and…”

 

Dean wouldn’t open his eyes.  He felt Sam’s hand leave his shoulder, heard the sudden intake of his brother’s breath.  Dean didn’t want to see what Sam’s recognition looked like.  He was too afraid he already knew the expression—disgust.  Condemnation.  Hatred.

 

The others had worn it, too, he thought, seeing again the ring of faces around him as they’d finished and taken their final blows.

 

Every one of them had said some variation of the same words:  whore, filth, disgusting slut. 

 

It had to be the curse.

 

“Dean?” Sam whispered, horror dropping his voice to the depths.  And Dean knew he had to be the older brother here, had to tell Sam it was alright.  But he wasn’t sure he could.  He didn’t have anything left of himself to hold onto.  Everything he’d been had gone away when he’d let his brother have him on that motel bed.

 

What had happened after hadn’t mattered, not really.  It hadn’t happened to him, Dean Winchester.  Because there was no Dean, not anymore.  Not since his brother had fucked him.

 

Still, training pays, and Dean wasn’t given the responsibility of caring for Sam all those years ago just to let it go now when his brother most needed him.

 

“It’s okay, Sam,” Dean said, still not opening his eyes.  His lids were too heavy for him, weighing him earthward.  He wanted to sink beneath the stinking asphalt of the bar’s back lot and sleep there, alone and unmarked, forever.

 

“Dean, did I—?” 

 

Dean heard the sound of retching next, and he thought he should try to comfort Sam, but he couldn’t seem to find it in him to move.

 

Sam was back, then, hand on Dean’s shoulder once more, and Dean felt the phantom heat of flesh just above the tortured skin of his cheek.

 

“Did I do any of this?” Sam whispered, tears in his voice that Dean didn’t want to see on his brother’s face.

 

Dean managed to shake his head.

 

“But I raped you?”

 

Another shake.

  
“Dean.”  And there was the stern, stubborn Winchester brother, the one that never let anything go when he needed to know. 

 

“Wasn’t rape,” Dean breathed, barely audible.  Exhaustion was funneling him down toward the welcoming darkness, and he wanted to go there forever and be free of the pain.

 

“Dean.”  How could Sam put so much into a single syllable?

 

“I let you.”  Three syllables, then, meaning so much more than they said on the surface.

 

Silence.

 

Dean thought maybe he’d let some time slide away from him, then, and that if he opened his eyes Sam would be gone, but when he did, it was to see Sam looking at him with such suffering on his face it made Dean wince.

 

As soon as Sam saw that Dean was watching, he let his blank mask slip into place instead, and he said, “Okay, so no doctors, then.  But man, you’re a mess.  You need help I can’t give.”

 

“’ll have to do,” Dean rasped.

 

Sam nodded tightly, resolve thinning his lips to a hard line.  Carefully, he reached beneath Dean’s armpits to help his brother rise.

 

Dean clenched his teeth and hissed out the yelp that wanted to come of having his ribcage moved like that, but he was more or less upright soon enough, and then they were moving with glacial speed around the corner of the bar and toward the waiting Impala.

 

Beside her sat a late model Cavalier, driver’s side door still open.  Sam hipped it shut as they passed, muttering something about the owner finding it in the morning, and then opened the passenger side door and eased Dean into the seat, ignoring Dean’s breathy protests about blood on the upholstery.

 

When Dean’s butt hit the seat, he sucked in a huge breath, the pain racing through him so intense that he couldn’t keep in the tears that started in his eyes.

 

Sam clenched his jaw, eyes grim, and ignored Dean’s discomfort, instead closing the door and moving around to take his seat behind the wheel.

 

“Hang on, man.  We’ll get you help somehow.”

 

Dean heard the familiar growl of the Chevy’s big engine, heard Sam drop her into drive, felt her starting to move across the gravel lot.  Sam was being careful, but when he eased her up onto the road from the lot, she shimmied on her frame, and Dean felt it up through his belly and along his ribs.  He took a breath to gasp and then he felt nothing else, the darkness claiming him before he could even scream.

 

*****

Some time had passed when Dean again awoke, but it was like nothing had changed, for as soon as he became aware of himself, he realized that Sam was between his legs.

 

He struggled weakly, no more than a rocking motion of his head, really, and Sam’s eyes came up to meet his own.

 

His fingers were inside of Dean.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, tears making twin tracks down his anguished face. “There’s tearing, and I need to put some of this antibiotic ointment there or it might get infected.  I’m sorry,” he repeated, waiting for Dean to acknowledge Sam’s reason for violating him again this way.

 

Dean let out a long breath through his nose and nodded as best he could, letting his head sink back against the pillow and staring hard at the ceiling as Sam finished.  When his fingers slipped free of him, Dean couldn’t help the moan he made, and Sam turned his back to him suddenly, hiding his reaction.

 

“I’m okay, Sam,” he whispered, throat ravaged raw from screaming and abuse.

 

Sam brought a bottle of water around the bed to Dean and helped him raise his head enough to drink some of it, lowering him with gentle care back to the pillow when he had had enough.

 

Then he returned to his care of Dean’s injuries.  Apparently, he’d had a bath, because it seemed like the worst of the filth had been sluiced from his skin and his hair was damp.  He didn’t remember that at all.

 

Sam’s shaking hands moved over his ribcage carefully but with an insistent pressure that made Dean hold his breath, waiting.

 

When Sam struck the broken ribs—two on the right side—Dean couldn’t help the high-pitched whine that left him, no matter how he’d braced for the expected pain.

 

“We have to wrap them,” Sam said softly, his voice all apology, and Dean nodded, clenching his teeth against the rolling spikes of pain that kept his breath shallow and harsh.

 

The process took all of Dean’s little energy, and by the end, he was sweating, swearing, and shaking, his jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth ached.

 

But there was some relief when Sam let him lie back against the pillows, propped up behind him for ease of breathing.

 

Then Sam went to work on Dean’s face.  There was something horrifying about having a needle so close to his eye, but he trusted Sam’s handiwork, having seen it often enough, and he knew that it was necessary by the pinched look around Sam’s mouth as he sewed.  Apparently, his cheek had been torn open by a ring.  Dean didn’t want to think about whom it had belonged to, but he knew there’d been a boy, maybe seventeen, who’d shown up toward the end to try to help him and had ended up like the rest.

 

Dean shrugged the thought off, earning a tsk of disapproval from Sam, who was trying to tie off the thread.

 

The rest of the bruises and cuts took arnica salve and tender fingers, Dean’s breath leaving him in a rush every time Sam brushed a particularly sore spot.  He tried not to let Sam know how much it hurt, but his brother wasn’t buying the stoic act, and as soon as he was done working on Dean’s many injuries, he handed Dean two little tablets and a glass of water.

 

“Take these,” Sam insisted, tone brooking no argument, and Dean did as he was told, hoping the pills would drag him back down into the dark.  He was in pain, yes, but he also didn’t want to think right now, and he sure as hell didn’t want to explain what had happened, which he was sure was the next thing on Sam’s list.

 

“Those are antibiotics,” Sam explained.  “We have to try to stave off infection.  I don’t know what to do if you come down with a fever…”  Dean watched as Sam marshaled his worry.  He hated being a burden to his brother like this.

 

“I’ll be fine, Sam.  I’m a Winchester.  We’re tough.”

 

Sam’s smile was bitter and didn’t reach his eyes.  Dean watched his brother busy himself with putting away the first aid supplies and cleaning up the mess he’d made in tending to Dean’s wounds.  When the puttering was all done, Sam sank onto the opposite bed—thankfully stripped of all evidence of their earlier encounter—and propped his elbows on his knees.

 

“Who was it?” He asked after a minute of tense silence.

 

Dean shook his head.  He wasn’t up for this.  And besides, it didn’t matter.

 

“Besides me, I mean,” Sam added, self-loathing thick in his tones.

 

Dean tried not to sigh—mostly because it hurt like a son of a bitch—and said, “You didn’t hurt me, Sam.  End of story.  I don’t want to talk about that again, alright?”

 

Sam didn’t even bother to pretend that he’d agree to those terms, but he let it go.

 

“Who, Dean?”

 

Dean shrugged, a minute rise of his shoulders.  “It doesn’t matter, Sam.  They weren’t themselves.  They were under the influence of the curse.  It’s not like they’d have done this if they’d been in their right minds.  Hell, one of them cried through the whole thing, like he sort of knew what he was doing.”

 

“How many?”

 

Dean closed his eyes briefly as an intense wash of anger passed over him.  Why did Sam need to know that?  Wasn’t it obvious that Dean was used up?  What good would it do knowing how many had gotten their shot at him?

 

Dean’s voice was weary.  “Maybe four.  I don’t remember everything.  And I was unconscious for some of it.”

 

Sam dropped his head into his hands, and for a long minute all that Dean could hear was his brother’s shuddering breaths.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, voice muffled and low.

 

“For what?”

 

“I should have been there.  I should have stopped them.”

 

“Dude, you didn’t know.”

 

“But I _should_ have!  What good is this stupid gift of mine if it doesn’t tell me when you’re in danger?”

 

“Sam, it’s a curse.  You know you can’t do anything about it except stay out of its way.”  He’d told himself that so many times tonight that Dean thought maybe he’d be able to recite it in his sleep.

 

“I could have stopped them.”

 

“How, by killing them?  Huh?  Sam, that isn’t you.  And it isn’t me, either.  They didn’t mean it, Sam, it just happened.  You’ve gotta let it go.”

 

Sam stood up suddenly, looming over Dean, and he couldn’t help the flinch, like an involuntary action.  Sam saw it and paled, took a step back and then stalked to the far corner of the room, where he began to pace along the room’s back wall.  It wasn’t more than four strides for Sam from one corner to the other, and the movement soon hypnotized Dean into closing his eyes.

  
God, he was so tired.

 

He must have slept because when he came to again, it was sunny, the golden light of late afternoon pouring in under the edge of the heavy curtains.  He was dressed in old boxers worn to thin softness, and he was disgusted to find himself driven almost to tears by how grateful he was to be wearing anything.  He hated to be naked now.

 

Sam’s steady breathing told Dean without looking that his brother was asleep in the other bed, and Dean was grateful for that, too.  He had to take a wicked piss, but he didn’t want Sam feeling like he had to help.  He tried to tell himself it wasn’t because he was uncomfortable with the idea of Sam touching him.  Sam had touched him plenty earlier that morning, fixing him up.  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Sam’s hands would make him shiver, and Dean hated himself a little for that.  He had to get over this right the fuck now.  It wasn’t like Sam had done anything to him on purpose.

 

But Dean was seriously deluded about his ability to walk the six steps to the bathroom, and he only got about halfway there when he discovered that his legs weren’t going to hold him.  He swore softly to himself, a stream of words that would have made a sailor blush, and just as he was about to sink heavily to the carpet, he felt hands holding him up.

 

“You should’ve woken me up,” Sam said.

 

Dean tried not to stiffen beneath his brother’s touch.  Mostly, he succeeded, and if Sam noticed anything off, he was doing a good job of hiding it.

 

Together, they made it to the bathroom, where there was an awkward moment of negotiating how much more help Dean would need.  He insisted he could get his boxers down himself, so Sam left him to take care of his business, closing the door part way and telling Dean he’d be right outside.

 

“Way to ruin the mood,” Dean muttered, and Sam made a half-hearted attempt at laughter.

Once he was back in bed, Sam resumed his now-familiar seat on the other bed, facing Dean.

 

“We have to get some help.”

 

Dean nodded.  He’d thought of that while taking his little vacation in the bathroom.  Sam couldn’t be expected to protect Dean from every accidental touch, and they hadn’t really figured out how the curse worked yet anyway.

 

“Bobby,” they both said at the same time, Sam already reaching for his cell on the nightstand between them.

 

The older hunter was, of course, willing to help John Winchester’s boys, Sam told Dean after he hung up. 

 

Dean insisted that they leave that night, but Sam was stubborn in his refusal to drive them anywhere.

  
“You’re not in any shape to be on the road, man, and Bobby’s is at least eight hours away.  You’re going to need some rest first.”

 

Irrational anger swamped Dean then, and he wanted to throw something at his brother to wipe that mulish look off of Sam’s face.  He was actually reaching for the bedside telephone when he realized what he was contemplating.  The feeling passed as quickly as it had come, leaving Dean shaking in its wake, and he wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.

 

“You okay?”

 

That was question that was going to get old in a hurry.

 

“Sam, I’m fine.  Would you quit asking?”

 

“You were raped and beaten by at least five guys, Dean, and you want me to believe that you’re fine?”

 

Dean did some mental math.  “Four,” he insisted, giving Sam a steady look.  They were not going through this again.

 

Sam’s expression was the careful indifference he always assumed when he didn’t want Dean to know what he was really thinking, and it telegraphed better than words what Sam must believe.

 

“Damnit, Sam, I’ve told you we’re not talking about this again.  You didn’t rape me.  You didn’t beat me.  I don’t want to tell you again, got it?”

 

“You don’t get to decide that for the both of us, Dean,” Sam said, but it wasn’t anger driving his voice.  Instead, he sounded defeated, weighed down by something too heavy for him to carry.  “I don’t need to be protected from what I did.  I need to know.”

 

Dean closed his eyes and tried to feign sleep, frantically turning over in his mind any number of lines that might have worked in the past but didn’t seem to have any cache now. 

 

Then again, he’d never been gang raped before, nor had he ever fucked his brother.

 

Sighing, Dean opened his eyes and leveled a steady look at Sam, who was looking right back, face tense, eyes focused like Dean might disappear if he didn’t keep a close watch.

 

“I liked it,” he said, more quietly than he’d meant to.  He’d wanted to say it like it didn’t mean anything, like it was entirely nonchalant, like he confessed to enjoying sex with his brother every fucking day.

 

Sam’s eyes widened a little at Dean’s confession, and Dean waited to see the expected expression of disgust take up residence where compassion had been.

 

Instead, Sam slid forward a little on the edge of the bed, an action that made Dean tense up himself.

 

“Yeah, right.  Which is why every time I’m close to you, you do that.”

 

“What?” Dean bluffed, stalling.

 

“Dean,” Sam said quietly, and Dean let his shoulders slump. 

 

“I don’t blame you, Sam, okay? I just… .  You told me that we could do it the hard way, or—“  Dean didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.  He tried again.  “You weren’t going to hurt me unless I resisted.  And I didn’t want to make it worse for you, so I went along.  And…”  He took a deep breath.  He didn’t want to say this next part, didn’t want to explain how he could’ve come like he had, how they could have enjoyed it so much.

 

“It was good.  _You_ were good.  I—we—“  But he was done.  Whatever else he might have said would have to go to the grave with him.  Dean couldn’t talk about this anymore.

 

He’d given his little monologue with his eyes on an ugly-ass picture of a field somewhere even more dull than East Buttfuck, Indiana, but he let his eyes slide to the side to take in Sam’s face.  He figured his brother would be ready to bolt for the door by now, and he wasn’t far wrong, but what he didn’t see there was disgust.

 

There was self-loathing, which was expected, and pity, which Dean really hated.  But there was something else, something living far back in Sam’s eyes that Dean couldn’t put his finger on.  It made him decidedly uncomfortable, and he took in a too-deep breath, forgetting his ribs.

 

That cost him, and the moment was gone as he gasped and panted through the pain.

 

When he looked again at Sam, his brother’s face was back to neutral.

 

“Did I hurt you?”

 

Dean shook his head, saying nothing more, and Sam insisted with a, “Dean” that wouldn’t take no for an answer.

 

“Please don’t make me talk about this,” Dean was reduced to saying, but Sam was implacable in his need to know. 

 

Finally, Dean figured it would be better to get it over with than live with it between them like this.

 

“It hurt at first, yeah.  But it got…better.  A lot better.  We—“  And he made a gesture that he hoped sufficed.

 

Sam made a noise that Dean couldn’t define and sat back on the bed, putting distance between them.  Dean risked a glance at Sam’s eyes and saw there unshed tears.

 

“What?” he asked, unable to discern what was causing Sam pain in what he’d said.

 

“I just remembered…”

 

Dean’s breath stopped in his chest, ice shooting through his veins and pooling along his spine.  He wanted to die.  If Sam remembered what had happened, Dean wasn’t sure he could carry it.  It was one thing to be the only keeper of the secret.  It was another to share the knowledge between them.  There’s no way they could pretend if Sam remembered.

 

“I hit you.”

 

Dean closed his eyes tight and tried to block out the sound of Sam’s shaking voice.

 

“I hit you to get you to stop fighting me.  And I—I bit you.  I did this,” and Sam’s hand was suddenly there, touching Dean’s swollen lower lip.  He hadn’t expected it, and it startled him into making a breathy noise and trying to slide away, which only resulted in making his ribs scream.  He gasped and stilled while Sam babbled sorry after sorry at him.

 

Dean finally gritted out, “Just warn a guy, would ya?” and tried a grimace of a smile.

 

“We’re never getting through this,” Sam despaired, and in his voice was the weight of all blame for what had happened.

 

Dean forced his eyes open and talked around the pain.  “Bullshit.  We’re Winchesters, and we don’t give up.  This isn’t anything, Sam.  You were cursed, get it?  You wouldn’t have done any of that otherwise.  You know it, and I know it.  You have to stop blaming yourself.”

 

Sam’s snort was all denigration aimed solely at himself, and Dean wanted to be able to reach out and put his hand on Sam’s knee or his shoulder to show him that he wasn’t afraid of his brother at all.  But he couldn’t manage it, physically, and he let that be his only excuse as he instead listened to his brother break apart.

 

“Do you remember anything else?” he asked, not really wanting an answer—god, _really not wanting an answer_ —but needing to get Sam away from whatever thoughts were driving his breath from him like that.  It sounded too much like sobbing, and Dean couldn’t listen to it anymore.

 

“No.”  Sam’s voice was thick with unshed tears.  “No,” he said again, stronger, sucking in a wet breath.  “Just the violence.  I’m sorry, Dean.  I’m so sorry.”  And he was crying then for real, big gusting sobs that shook his shoulders, head buried in his hands against his knees, rocking.

 

Dean got his feet around to the side of the bed before Sam realized his brother was moving, and then he raised his red-rimmed eyes and pinned Dean with a look.

 

“How can you even stand to be in the same room with me?”

The rage spiraled through him suddenly again, and Dean wanted to shout that it wasn’t about Sam.  He was the one who’d been raped, damn it.  It was about him, _Dean_.  Sam could just fuck off and die.

 

He opened his mouth to say something to that effect when the rage loosened and sloughed off him like shed skin.  He was left gaping, and Sam gave him a questioning look.

  
“Dean?”

 

“For the last time, Sam.  You didn’t hurt me.  I don’t blame you.  We’re fine.  Let it go.”

 

“You’re lying.”

 

Dean let his head bow, looking at the finger-shaped bruises on his thighs for long moments before answering, his voice almost inaudible above the breathing silence of the afternoon room.

 

“You’re my brother, Sam, and I love you.  Whatever happened between us, it’s done.  We can’t change it, but we can learn to let it alone.  I need you to let it alone, Sam.  Please.”  He put whatever was left of his heart into that plea, let Sam see that he was begging, and his brother, blessedly, surrendered to Dean’s request.

 

“Okay.”

 

Dean nodded and then tried to swing his legs back up on the bed, discovered that he was too weak, and consciously stifled his urge to shiver when Sam gently lifted his legs and helped him lie back against the pillows again.

 

He wanted to sleep some more, which seemed wrong since he’d already gotten so much, but when Sam handed him some pain pills and water, Dean took them gratefully nonetheless and let the thick blanket of drug-induced darkness blot out what light was left.

 

*****

 

It was two days of awkward silences, countless suppressed expressions of pain, and too many hours of bad daytime television to stomach before Sam said it was okay for them to go to Bobby’s.

 

By the time they’d put fifteen miles behind them, Dean was seriously doubting the wisdom of his insistence.  No matter how smooth the roads Sam took to keep Dean from being jostled were, the motion of the car couldn’t help but send jarring pain through his ribs.  It still hurt to sit, too, and he finally let Sam stop to get the travel pillows out of the trunk.  He felt like eleven kinds of idiot for having to use them, but he had to concede after a mile or so that they helped some. 

 

Sam parked well away from the diner when he went in for their food, making sure that Dean was locked in before he left.  Then he hurried back as quickly as he could, eyes on every person making his way across the parking lot toward the restaurant.

 

At a rest area just over the South Dakota line, Sam parked in a handicapped spot, ignoring the glare of an elderly woman who was potting her dog on the grass beneath a “No curbing” sign, and helped Dean into the bathroom, where he hovered over Dean and glared so angrily at every other occupant of the restroom that they were soon the only ones inside.

  
“Dude, if you don’t chill out, someone’s going to call the cops.”

 

Sam just glowered and waited for Dean to finish washing his hands.

 

In this way, they got to Bobby’s in about eleven hours, and by the time they pulled into the man’s damnedly rutted driveway, Dean thought he’d kiss the ground—if only he could get down and back up on his own—for being stopped.  It was a testament to Dean’s weakness that he didn’t even try to protest Sam’s helping him out of the car. 

 

Bobby greeted them from the porch, having been clued in ahead of time to the apparent conditions of Dean’s curse, and gave them both a good once-over before gesturing to an outbuilding that had, in more innocent days, housed the equipment he used to process deer during hunting season.  Bobby’d since moved on to bigger—and less edible—game, and he’d had just enough time to convert the place into a reasonable facsimile of a convalescent’s room, complete with a chemical toilet behind a privacy screen; a sink he’d used for cleaning deer guts back in the days when he’d hunted only Bambi; a single bed with a good mattress, piled high with moth-eaten but clean blankets; a woodstove that had always been there; a rickety tri-legged table with a lamp attached by orange extension cord to the wall socket; and a big chair, sprung in places, losing its stuffing but serviceable.

 

“It ain’t much, but it’ll do,” he observed from the doorway, wincing to see the way Dean moved.

 

“Thanks, Bobby,” Sam said, the feeling in his voice all out of proportion with the modest living arrangements.

 

“Got a rollaway cot in the house,” he noted. 

 

“Good,” Sam nodded, preoccupied with helping prop Dean up against the bedstead, pillows cushioning his back. 

 

“And the place is warded six ways to Sunday.  No one and nothin’s gettin’ in unless you want it to.”

 

“That include people?” Dean asked. 

 

“Yep.  You should be free of the effects of the curse, ‘slong as you’re in this shed.”  Bobby indicated sigils carved over the door and single wide window next to the bed. 

 

“And I’m workin’ on an amulet that I can wear, too, just in case.”

 

“In case of what?” Dean asked, but he suspected he already knew the answer.

 

“Until we know exactly what this curse does, I’m not takin’ any chances,” Bobby said, leaving it at that.  Dean was relieved; he didn’t need it all spelled out for him.

 

Sam went inside to start the research, leaving Dean to sleep off the stress of traveling, and it was dark when he again awoke to find his brother asleep in the chair by his side.  Dean sighed.  Sam was going to have to learn to be without him.  Who knew how long it would take for Bobby to find a way to reverse the curse, assuming he even could.  Dean didn’t want to imagine his life if there were no way to stop the effects of that bitch’s words, but he knew it was a possibility, and Sam had some things to learn.

 

“Sam,” he said, voice sleep-roughened. 

 

Sam came awake with a start that sent a pang of guilt through Dean’s gut, but he said anyway, “Go inside and get some sleep, man.  I’ll be fine out here.”

 

“No.  No way,” Sam insisted, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, which did precious little.  The man looked like death walking.

  
“Sam, you aren’t going to be able to help me if you’re half dead.  I’m fine.  If I need you, I’ll call.”  And he nodded to the cell phone on his nightstand.

 

Sam stood up from the chair and stretched hugely, yawn splitting his face in half.  “I’ll go get the cot.”

 

“No.”

 

Something in Dean’s tone brought Sam to a standstill, and he waited.

 

Dean braced himself to say the next part.  “I don’t need you to babysit me, Sam.  I need you sharp so you can find a cure for this thing.  And if there isn’t one, you need to learn to do this shit on your own.  You don’t need me slowing you down by depriving you of sleep.  Go inside.”

 

Sam looked like he was going to protest, but he thought better of it, the exhaustion on his face evidence enough of how he really felt.

 

At the door, he said, “Goodnight, Dean.  Call me if you need anything.”

 

Dean grunted his assent and slid down a little against the pillows, closing his eyes as Sam drew the door shut.

 

Truth was, Sam made Dean feel claustrophobic in the small space and simply reminded Dean that he was a prisoner there unless and until a cure for the curse was found.

 

He slept well that night, woken only when Sam came in with a plate of sausage and eggs for breakfast, which he wolfed down with some enthusiasm.  His ribs still hurt like a mother, and sitting was still something of a challenge—he wouldn’t try the sprung chair for a good long time, he knew—but he was feeling marginally more human.

 

That day, Sam put a small mirror up over the sink, and Dean saw that the cut under his eye was finally going down, the swelling easing as the healing process took hold.  The rest of his face looked like it had been painted in watercolors by some psycho kid in art therapy, but he figured it would all fade eventually.  Besides, he didn’t think that looking good was necessarily in his best interest anymore.

 

The days fell into a predictable pattern.  Sam would have breakfast with him and then disappear into Bobby’s inner sanctum to study until lunch brought him out with another plate for Dean.  They’d shoot the shit about nothing, avoiding one another’s eyes for the most part, and then Sam would go back inside for another session with the books.

 

Sometimes Bobby got a client who came in for a part or a car repair, and occasionally the man went out to town for this or that, but mostly they stayed close.  Once in awhile, Bobby’d come to the door, and he and Dean would talk about what had happened, Dean trying to give as many details as he could remember of the cursing itself, trying to recall the witch’s last words, which had wrought such havoc in his life.  Sometimes, Bobby would ask him more personal questions, and at those times, Sam always excused himself, saying he needed to check something inside.

 

Dean was glad Sam would get gone.  He couldn’t go over some of the stuff if his brother was listening, and whenever Sam did stick around, the muscles in his neck would get so tense that Dean feared his brother would have a stroke. 

 

Bobby just listened to it all, face carefully expressionless, sometimes jotting notes in a ragged-eared wire-bound notebook, sometimes just staring off into the middle distance, clearly thinking.  Dean liked the man more for the fact that he didn’t make a big deal out of some of what Dean said, and he found that he could talk to Bobby about things he remembered that he’d never, ever share with Sam.  Bobby never asked Dean to recount what had happened with Sam, though the man had to know, and Dean liked him all the more for his tact in that regard.

 

Gradually, the fits of rage faded until Dean was mostly okay all the time with Sam, and likewise, Dean started feeling like Sam’s brother again, until one day, when Sam forgot himself and slapped Dean’s shoulder lightly at something Dean had said, Dean didn’t stiffen at all, just smiled into Sam’s suddenly concerned face.  When he saw that Dean wasn’t upset, though, something inside Sam seemed to give way, and if Dean saw the tears that pricked at the corners of Sam’s eyes, he pretended not to notice them.

 

After that, their conversations became more of what they’d once been, brotherly and loving, though with the usual innuendo about their sexual preferences kept out.  They did make the familiar accusations of incompetence with the accustomed belligerence of brothers trapped in close quarters for a lot of the time, though, and it was all good.

 

Too, something had changed, and in a way that he couldn’t explain, Dean knew that they weren’t really brothers at all anymore.  Between them always were the things they would not say, the feelings Dean had buried and Sam had forgotten altogether, the fact that they had been intimate once an unavoidable elephant in an otherwise empty room.  Dean thought he saw a shadow of it on Sam’s face sometimes, caught him now and then looking like he was about to say something irreparable.  And Dean, for his part, always held his breath, entirely unsure if he’d welcome the chance to hear it or would run away if Sam ever let it slip.

 

If he was still an emotional mess, Dean had physically healed pretty well, though his face scarred some.  He thought it made him look rakish, and besides, he didn’t spend much time at the mirror anymore.  No one was going to see him except Sam and Bobby, anyway.

 

If some of this was the upside of ten weeks at Bobby’s, the downside was that they were no closer to a reversal of the curse that kept Dean trapped there.  Dean had eventually gotten in on the research, Sam bringing him books from the house or letting him use the laptop and wireless to search online.  Unfortunately, all the sources seemed to say the same thing, namely:  Curses can’t be broken.  Avoid them at all costs. 

 

Still, Sam’s fervor for finding a “cure” didn’t waver, and his obsession started to take its toll.  Sam was getting thinner, developing dark circles under his eyes, and when he thought Dean wasn’t looking, he’d let his shoulders slump, drop his head a little, and stare away like he was seeing some awful future.

 

Dean finally said, “Enough, Sam.”

 

Sam, who’d been scrolling through the blog of a purported paranormal expert out of St. Louis, stopped and gave Dean an eyebrow of inquiry.

 

“You can’t kept his up.  And you can’t keep babysitting me.  I’m safe here.  We’ve tested Bobby’s wards, and the amulet he made seems to work, which means that you can get out of here for awhile.  If something happens to me—which it won’t—he can help me.  So hit the road, find something to do that doesn’t involve this curse.  Come back with fresh eyes.  You’re starting to look like a zombie, little brother.”

 

It was the first time Dean had consciously invoked that reminder of their relationship, and Sam’s pleasure in hearing it was apparent by the flush that rose in his otherwise too-pale cheeks.  Dean didn’t let Sam’s happiness deter him from pushing, however.

 

“There’s a poltergeist over in Butte that needs putting down, and even you can’t screw that up.  Go salt and burn the bitch, spend a little time out in the world.  Bet you’ll feel a lot better once you’re out there doing the work.”

 

Sam considered Dean for several minutes, under which scrutiny Dean squirmed.  His ribs still twinged occasionally, and he sometimes had pain when using the bathroom, but he wasn’t about to share either of those details with his overprotective brother.  Sam wasn’t in the room at night to hear Dean’s nightmares, which was just as well, since Dean was pretty sure, as often as not, it was Sam’s name on his lips when he awoke in a cold sweat.

 

Of course, those times when it was Sam’s name, Dean knew he wasn’t really scared so much as he was something else.  Something he’d never in a million years name.

 

“There’s still a demon to kill, too, if you’ll recall.”

 

It wasn’t fair of Dean to use the vengeance argument on Sam, he knew.  But he wanted Sam to go.  Needed it, in fact.  Needed to prove to himself that he’d be alright if his little brother wasn’t around to answer his call.

 

Sam agreed, reluctantly and with many admonishments about how Dean should behave in his absence.  Bobby finally had to drag Sam backwards out of Dean’s room.  A few minutes later, Dean heard the Impala growl out of the yard, and he let out a long, shaking breath.

 

After that, Sam came and went at fairly regular intervals, bringing back with him new texts that Bobby borrowed, begged, or stole from nebulous sources he refused to name and that Sam swore he himself couldn’t identify after the fact.  Dean treated every find like it could be The One, and he did his best to hide his disappointment as the weeks turned to months and there wasn’t even a mention of reversal in any of the occult texts.

 

Bobby kept at it, tireless and gruff whenever Dean thanked him or suggested that he do something else.  He took no money for Dean’s upkeep and refused to let Sam work it off around the yard. 

 

“You boys are what I’ve got,” he’d say, making a dismissive gesture with his hand, and Dean felt a welling love every time, which he masked by saying something about senile old men or by turning to throw something for or at one of Bobby’s many dogs.

 

But even Dean’s stock of optimism had to give out over the long haul, as months began to wind toward a year and it became obvious that they weren’t going to find a cure or reversal or even any practicable way of Dean seeing the light of day beyond Bobby’s place.

 

He tried not to let his feelings show, hid from Sam his despair and the sleeplessness that started to plague him as he began to feel trapped.  He’d always hung his hope on a reversal, and the possibility that he might live like this for the rest of a too-long life, never being useful again, never rejoining the fight, having to let Sam go off alone for ever after, well, that dragged him down deep and rolled him in the stygian depths.

 

He started to think of ways that Sam could be free of him for good.

 

There must have been something on his face when Sam came through the door unexpectedly late one afternoon.  Dean’d been deep in contemplations, running the whetstone rhythmically over his favorite knife, watching the light pool and run along the balanced blade.

 

He looked up to find Sam in the doorway giving him a look, and something like fear skated through Dean’s stomach as he said, “What?”

 

“You can’t leave me, Dean.  Not like that.  You’re my brother, and I need you.”

 

So melodramatic was it that Dean tried to dredge up a derisive laugh, but since Sam had apparently pulled the ugliest ideas from the back of Dean’s brain, he couldn’t manage even a smile.

 

He let blade and stone drop onto the bed next to him, laced his fingers between his knees and stared down at the floor out in front of them.  He couldn’t look at Sam and say this.

  
“I can’t live like this anymore, Sam.  There is no cure.  There is no fucking reversal.  I’m stuck like this.  Fucked.”  His laugh was nasty, dark, bringing up with it from the cold pit of his soul the feelings he’d kept hidden from his brother all this time.

 

“She knew what she was doing, I’ll give her that.  I was always a whore, so she just put it out there for everyone to see.  Made it so that I couldn’t have the things I most loved—the hunt, some sweet honey on the side, hell, even you.  Can’t ride by your side, can’t kill things with you.  I’m worthless, Sam.  This isn’t me feeling sorry for myself.  This is the truth.  I can’t do any of the things that made me who I was.  What good am I to you or anybody in this room all the fucking time?”

 

“Look at me, Dean,” Sam said.  His voice echoed up from a place and a time that Dean knew was long past, knew that Sam himself couldn’t remember.  But Dean did.  He remembered looking up into the wonder of his brother’s wide eyes as Sam brought him to pleasure, brought him the one thing Dean had never expected, never wanted, never knew he’d needed before or since.

 

Dean shook away the memories and raised his head, surprised to find that Sam had somehow drawn a lot closer in the space of his reverie.  Pulling the chair up close to Dean, Sam dropped into it, keeping his eyes always on his brother’s.

 

What Dean saw there was the same love he’d witnessed when Sam had been inside him, and Dean didn’t think it had anything to do with being brothers—not then, and not now.  Reeling, he sat back on the bed, his breath coming faster in his chest.

  
This couldn’t be happening.  Again.  The curse didn’t work this way. 

 

“It isn’t the curse, Dean,” Sam said, and Dean was more than a little freaked that his brother could read him so well.

 

“I love you,” Sam continued.

 

And it didn’t mean what it should.  Or rather, it meant more than it should.  It meant things that Dean didn’t let himself think about when he startled out of a dream that left him hard and aching.  It meant things that brothers didn’t say to each other.  It meant Sam’s name spilling from his lips in completion and a thousand other endearments he saved up never to say aloud.

 

 “I think you love me, too,” Sam pushed, leaning forward.

 

Dean scrambled back across the bed, not caring that he looked like a coward, until the wall brought him up short.  Sam came out of the chair in a graceful crouch, catlike, and started to climb onto the bed.

 

“No,” Dean whispered, his voice fractured, caught between then and now.

 

“Okay,” Sam said, stopping.

 

Dean breathed.  It didn’t hurt at all anymore, and even his bathroom problems had subsided.  He was as healed physically as he was going to be.  But something inside of him was stuck on that point when his brother had shoved a knee between his thighs. 

 

His brother.

 

Sam.

 

Who was poised there, one knee on the bed, hands out at his sides, palms up in the universal sign of surrender.

 

He’d said no, and Sam had stopped.

 

Dean was hard.

 

Sam, too, Dean could see.

 

His heart hammered in his chest as he considered.  He could pretend this hadn’t happened, send Sam away, use the knife that even now gleamed steadily from the bed beside Sam’s leg.

 

Or he could let Sam in.  Could have this, at least.  Could know what it was like to have them both here in the moment, see if it was at all what he remembered it being.

 

Sam’s eyes were avid, but it wasn’t with the light of mania Dean had gotten too used to seeing on that long night so many months ago.  Instead, it was a hunger born of love, and Sam’s stillness spoke to that.  He awaited Dean’s word.  Yes or no.  Go or stay. 

 

Dean breathed and Sam waited.

 

“Okay,” he said, and then, “Yes.”

 

Sam’s movements slowed so that he telegraphed everything he intended, first laying a careful hand on one of Dean’s tense thighs, then sliding his knee further between Dean’s splayed legs.

 

Dean was leaning against the wall, his breath coming in fast pants, as Sam leaned down over him and let his lips hover over Dean’s.

 

Sam was waiting again.

 

Dean closed the gap, licking a line along Sam’s lower lip until his brother opened his mouth on a groan and let Dean explore.

 

It was like that for every choice, Sam making his intentions known, waiting for Dean to indicate it was okay, until they were naked and prone on the bed, side by side, one of Sam’s thighs tight between Dean’s own, his hand ghosting up and down Dean’s trembling flank.

 

Dean felt like he imagined a girl must feel, frightened and excited to be naked with a man like Sam, so full of love that he thought he might actually cry.  Instead, he leaned into his brother’s heat and kissed him, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and biting.  Sam surged over him, suddenly uncareful, his weight bearing Dean backwards onto the narrow bed, pinning him in place.

 

Dean stilled for a moment, having to adjust, and Sam said, “Look at me, Dean,” and Dean did.

 

What he saw there was all Sam, all his brother and his lover, all the man Dean had never expected to need or want or find.  He opened his thighs further, let Sam settle there, felt his brother’s hard shaft shift along his own aching member, felt a cry burst up out of his throat as he threw his head back. 

 

Sam increased the pace and wrapped his hand around them both, rutting against Dean in frantic rhythm until Dean was keening breathlessly beneath his brother’s pressing weight, thrusting his hips up in tiny arcs.

 

“Wait,” he said, and Sam stopped stone still, not even breathing, his eyes clouded by concern, driving back the desire that had lighted them up only a second before.

 

“I want you inside of me,” Dean said, and he raised his hips for emphasis.  Sam let go of them both, bowed his sweaty forehead to Dean’s shoulder, asked, “Are you sure?” against his ear.

 

Dean said, “Fuck, yes,” and thrust again, harder this time.

 

Sam pushed himself up to look down into his brother’s face, eyes searching for any sign that Dean might be deluded.  Dean showed him nothing but love and absolute assurance, and Sam nodded to himself and knelt up between Dean’s legs.

 

“We need lubricant,” Sam noted, eyes going to the free-standing plastic drawers on top of which sat the little microwave they’d eventually bought for Dean’s late night snack urges.

 

“Olive oil,” Dean said, nodding in that direction.  Sam padded over to the drawers and started rummaging through, and Dean took the opportunity to enjoy the view of his brother’s back, buttocks, and thighs.

Sam returned, oil in hand, and stood beside the bed to rub the slick fluid over his straining shaft.  Dean almost moaned aloud but restrained himself, and soon enough Sam was back between his thighs, one questing finger already entering him.

 

Dean sighed to feel the slick digit slide home and then let out a little gasp as Sam crooked that finger and sparked him up.

 

Dean arched into the touch and was not surprised when Sam added a second finger.

 

The third didn’t hurt, either, and by the time Sam had opened him, Dean was keening a little from the back of his throat and thrusting urgently onto Sam’s thrusting fingers.

 

Finally, Sam settled once more between Dean’s thighs.  Dean fit his knees against Sam’s long torso and tugged his brother inside, and Sam slid willingly home, seating himself deeply with one smooth thrust that made Dean shout wordlessly and writhe beneath him.

 

Head back, throat working convulsively around the sounds he tried not to let loose, Dean took everything his brother offered and let the rightness of it fill him. 

 

“Look at me, Dean” Sam said again, and Dean opened his eyes to find on his brother’s face a kind of love so wild, so wide and wicked and right that Dean let the tears come.

 

“I love you,” Sam said, thrusting harder, and Dean arched up into that thrust and came and came and came, his hot seed coating his stomach as he cried out, as tears flowed down his cheeks, as Sam repeated his words like a mantra, following his brother into completion only seconds later, filling Dean with heat that made him shudder and cant his hips up to take every last ounce of Sam’s love.

 

Dean breathed, “I love you,” into Sam’s sweat-slick shoulder, licked it into the skin of his neck, mumbled it over his mouth as Sam said the words himself.

 

How long they stayed like that, Dean neither knew nor cared, but eventually, Sam stirred enough to get off of Dean, to go to the sink, wet a clean cloth with warm water, wash his brother of their mingled fluid with gentle hands, following every laving swipe with his licking tongue, so that by the time his impromptu bath was done, Dean was almost ready for another round of getting dirty.

 

Sam snuggled in next to him, taking up way too much bed, and Dean didn’t care at all that he was the girl in this situation.  He fell asleep with the heat of his brother at his back, spooning him, safe, and if he had dreams, they were all of Sam, and if he cried out, Sam answered him with warm breath on his neck and cool kisses against his sleeping cheek.

 

*****

 

When Dean stumbled into Bobby’s house at five o’clock in the morning, the man heard first the whine of a dog and then the door as it hit the outside wall with force.  He was out of bed and down the stairs, gun in one hand, holy water in the other, and when he made the bottom stair and saw that it was Dean, he relaxed.

 

He shouldn’t have.

 

The boy was shaking, pale, breath erratic, and he fell toward Bobby with outstretched hands like his knees might not hold him.

 

Bobby reached out without thinking, dropping his weapons to catch Dean on the way down, and only when the boy was half across his lap on the floor did Bobby remember that Dean was outside the wards and that his own anti-curse amulet was hanging over the top knob of his bedstead upstairs.

 

He looked down with dawning horror into Dean’s face, saw only a kind of insentience there.  The boy’s eyes were wide, his lips drawn back in a terrible grimace, his face wet with what must be tears.

 

Bobby didn’t feel in the least like ravaging that quivering mouth, and he took a moment to throw his thanks to the heavens before shaking Dean a little and saying, “Dean, what’s wrong?  What is it?”

 

Which is when it occurred to him that Sam hadn’t come downstairs at all the commotion.

 

“Is it Sam?”

 

Stupid question.

 

Dean’s mouth opened as if to answer, but all that came out was a wail that made all the hairs on his arms stand up and sent the dogs outside the door to howling disconsolately.

 

Good god, the boy must be dead.

 

Bobby got up, dragging Dean with him with some effort, and planted the wreck of a man on the couch.  Then he stalked out toward the shed, fearing what he’d find even as he ran through the possibilities in his head.

 

He came through the door carefully, gun and holy water once again at the ready, to find Sam sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed pulling on his boots.

 

“Hey, Bobby, what’s with the gun?”

 

It was so casual a question that Bobby failed to find an answer right away, having expected nothing but the worst from Dean’s state.

 

“You been here all night?” he said instead of answering Sam.  He didn’t put the gun up, either.

 

“Yeah.”  And something in his drawl, something self-satisfied, and something in his smile, smirk-like, led Bobby to know exactly what Sam had been doing.

 

“What did you do to Dean?” he asked, letting his anger build in his voice.  That boy had been through enough, god knew.

 

“Nothing he didn’t want me to.  Lighten up, Bobby.  I didn’t force him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

 

“Then you want to explain to me why Dean’s a shivering wreck sitting on my sofa?”

 

Sam shrugged.  “Is he?  I don’t know, man.  I woke up, started to get dressed, he asked me where I was going.  I told him, you know, the usual stuff.  He’s such a whore, you’d think he’d be used to this by now.”

 

Sam’s casual use of a word that had caused Dean so much hurt made Bobby shiver, and then an idea started in his mind that grew into a certainty as he watched Sam’s smarmy smile.  Sam didn’t remember that he and Dean were brothers, at least not on any level that mattered.

 

“I’ll make some breakfast, get some coffee in him.  He’ll be fine,” Sam said, rising from the bed.

 

“Don’t you go near him,” Bobby said, refusing to move as Sam came toward the door.  “You just stay here until I call you, you got that?”

 

Sam looked genuinely mystified and maybe a little hurt.  “Okay,” he huffed, half a laugh on his kiss-blown lips.  “But Bobby, you’re taking this way too seriously.  It was just sex, you know?”

 

Bobby closed his eyes for a long second and then turned to go, putting the gun away and pocketing the holy water as he trudged toward the house.

 

Dean was better when he found him than when he’d left, having somehow dredged up some semblance of self from what remained to him.  He was still shaking, still pale and breathless, but he wasn’t crying.  There was a set to his jaw that reminded Bobby so much of John Winchester that a moment of grief took him by surprise and he had to sit down in the nearest chair.

 

“It’s the curse, isn’t it?” Dean said at last, and Bobby wouldn’t have known it was the boy’s voice at all if he hadn’t been in the room with him.

 

Bobby nodded, cleared his throat, said, “Yeah.”  There was a world of sympathy in that one word, and Dean actually flinched away from it.

 

“I’m cured.”

 

“Seems like.”

 

Dean’s head was down, eyes on his hands, which he was clenching as though to keep the shaking from betraying his feelings.

 

“He doesn’t remember, Bobby.”  Dean’s voice was low, already cold and lonely and beyond Bobby to fix. 

 

“Maybe…” Bobby started.  But he didn’t think it was fair to give Dean hope.

 

Still, the boy’s red-rimmed eyes pinned him, and he had to say something. 

 

“Maybe it’ll wear off.”

 

Dean’s snort had nothing of humor and everything of disbelief in it.  He looked back at his hands, shook his head.  “She didn’t count on us being brothers.”

 

Bobby didn’t even answer, knew Dean was just thinking out loud.

 

“What a bitch,” Dean said, but he couldn’t muster enough energy for any real venom. 

 

Bobby swallowed back his response; what could he possibly say that would help?

 

Obviously, the witch had worked in a counter-curse in the unlikely event that the original curse was broken.  If one of the people who used Dean like a whore fell in love with him and consummated that love genuinely, he’d be cured of the curse but at the cost of that one true love.  No one, not even the viciously long-sighted witch, could have foreseen that the person to love Dean back from the brink of his curse would be his brother.

 

Bobby wanted to weep himself at the monumental injustice of it.  She’d fucked up more than one man’s life; she’d destroyed what was left of a family.

 

Dean rose from the couch on unsteady legs, said, “Can you get him out of my—the shed?”

 

Bobby nodded.  “Sure.”  He was eager to do whatever might help Dean, so helpless did he feel.

 

“Just…just keep him away from me for awhile, okay?”

 

“’course.”

 

Bobby went back out to find Sam pacing around just outside the shed.

 

“Hey, are we having breakfast or what?”

 

He didn’t think Sam was being deliberately dense.  He figured it was part of the curse to make Sam forget anything that might have meant that he loved Dean in any way—brother or lover or any damned thing in between.

 

Still, he had to try. 

 

“Sam, what do you remember from eleven months ago, that night Dean got hurt?”

 

Sam shrugged, face suddenly stiff with hidden things.  “Some guys jumped him ‘cause of a curse.  Dean got…hurt.  I brought him here, and we’ve been helping him.  Why?  What’s going on, Bobby?”

 

“How’d you end up in bed with your brother, Sam?”  Bobby asked, once again ignoring Sam’s insistent questions.

 

Sam smiled a little, reflexive and nervous, and rolled one shoulder in a half-shrug.  “I don’t know.  It just…happened.  We both wanted it, and it felt…right, I guess.”  He laughed then.  “You know how Dean is, man.  Who can resist him, even without the curse?”

 

Bobby hadn’t wanted to hit anyone so hard since the last time he’d laid eyes on the boy’s father, but he let it go, knowing it wasn’t the boy’s fault anymore than it had been Dean’s that he’d been cursed to begin with.  Instead, he said, “Come on to the kitchen, help me make breakfast.”

 

He heard Dean go out the front door as soon as they’d come in the back, and while they were breaking eggs and heating up the skillet for bacon, while Sam was busy brewing coffee, Bobby heard the Impala start.  He closed his eyes against the hurt he felt, wondering if he’d ever see Dean again, wondering if Sam would.

 

For his part, Sam didn’t seem alarmed that his brother—his supposedly curse-ridden brother, the one he’d been protecting for the best part of a year, the one he’d obviously made love to only hours before—was going off into the world on his own.

 

Bobby dropped the bowl he’d been using for the eggs into the sink, turned away from Sam, and walked outside to sit on the porch.  There’d be time enough for explaining to the younger Winchester what exactly had happened here.  For now, he couldn’t quite stomach being in the same room with the damned kid.

 

*****

 

Dean set his jaw hard and turned up the music on the stereo, drumming his hands in nervous time to the driving beat.

 

He’d stopped a mile below Bobby’s house.  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

 

It had been six months since he’d seen Sam.  Six months since that morning he’d woken up more alone than he’d ever been in his life.  He’d reconciled himself to life on the road without Sam by his side.  He’d learned to eat alone and sleep alone, learned to hunt alone without anyone to watch his back, learned to listen to his tunes without expecting annoyed complaints, learned to laugh at things that weren’t really funny, if only to make sure he still could.

 

Learned that there wasn’t a woman in fifteen states he wanted to lay.

 

Learned there wasn’t a man who looked like Sam who could come close to satisfying him.

 

Learned, in short, that he could live this way without dying, but that it was really only a matter of degrees.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  That’s life.  Beyond breathing, Dean didn’t expect much.

 

Deciding it was stupid to waste gas idling on a back road when he could be sitting in a kitchen drinking whiskey, Dean pulled away from the shoulder and rode on toward Bobby’s.

 

Nothing saying Sam was there.

 

He saw Sam’s tall figure even as he pulled into the driveway.  Sam was chopping wood, the axe rising and falling in an easy rhythm, and Dean felt a pain in his gut so searing that he thought for a minute he might die.  Then he took a deep breath, let the car coast up next to Bobby’s old blue truck, and cut the engine.

 

Sam had stopped his work and was staring at Dean, axe loose at his side.

 

Bobby was standing on the porch, watching.

 

Dean got out of the car carefully, like he was hurting, though it was all phantom pain.  His wounds wouldn’t show and they didn’t heal.

 

“Hey,” he said to Sam, voice carrying over the wide yard.

 

“Hey,” Sam said back, and as though he finally realized he was holding an axe, he let it drop casually into the chopping block and moved toward Dean at first stiffly, like he’d forgotten how to walk, and then more quickly, gaining speed as he came, so that by the time he got to his brother, Dean had braced himself as for a blow.

 

But Sam didn’t hit him.  He wrapped his arms around his brother, buried his face in Dean’s neck, and said, “I love you.”

 

Dean stiffened, struggled, heart beating frantically, breath coming in gasps.  He wasn’t…he couldn’t.  This wasn’t what he’d expected, what he’d prepared himself for.

 

He pulled away, and Sam let him go.

 

Shaking his head, Dean backed up one step and then two, until he came up against the still-open door of the Impala.  He was sorely tempted to just slide inside and drive away.

 

He ran a hand over his face, then through his hair, and looked at Sam, expecting to see some smirk hiding at the corner of his eyes.  But there didn’t seem to be a trick lurking in Sam’s features.

 

Dean shook his head again.  “No.  It doesn’t work like that.  I checked.  There’s no way around the counter-curse.  You don’t love me.  What game are you playing?”

 

“Dean,” Sam said.  “I’m your brother.  I’ll always love you.”  And there was in Sam’s tone something not quite right, something that said Sam was giving Dean what he knew his brother expected.  Something that said Sam had rehearsed this moment until he could get it more or less right.  Whatever feeling might have been there was manufactured for the occasion, probably from memories Bobby had given Sam himself, evidence that they were brothers who cared about each other.

 

And that’s when Dean realized what Sam had meant by “love.”

 

There was nothing on Sam’s face that said he wanted to be inside Dean again.  Nothing that said he’d be that lover Dean had never expected to have.

 

Sam was his brother.  Right.

 

Dean nodded jerkily, spared a glance for Bobby, whose face wore a pained expression.  Dean knew that look.  It usually meant he was fucked.

 

Sighing, he closed the Impala door, slapped Sam companionably on the back, and let go what was left of his heart.

 

Breathing in and out had just gotten a lot harder.  He was thinking maybe it wasn’t worth it after all.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The title is taken from _Hamlet_. 
> 
> 2\. I wrote this years ago but am only now migrating my works from one archive to another.


End file.
